We loved our local Prairie Dog, he was our neighbor, and we would often leave veggies outside his burrow. He was the Puxatony Phil of our little community. Maybe we fattened him up too much, maybe he got lazy, because today he got killed by an Eagle. We will be sad to see him go. This Eagle took him and was in the process of eating him while a magpie tried to get in on the meal:

The hike was absolutely amazing! On the way up, the road turned to dirt and we must have turned somewhere we were not welcome. Saw several people walking the road as we went up, and they gave us friendly waves, but you could tell that they were looking at us as outsiders. We stopped short of the trail head because my car couldn’t handle the road. At first we parked too close to somebody’s house, and he came out and politely informed us that we shouldn’t park on that guy’s property, that he “didn’t know what he might do to my car”. But he did say we might be able to park down the street. He also said that this was just an access road and that the actual trail up mount Thorodin was on the other side of the mountain. We would not be deterred, we found somewhere else to park and went on with the plan.